Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Starting next week, I'll be teaching an undergraduate course on the doctrine of the Trinity. I've pasted below the outline/syllabus for the course. If anyone in the Sydney area would like to sit in on the class, auditors are always welcome!

Introduction

Welcome! In this subject, you are invited to
explore the central teaching of the Christian faith: the doctrine of
the Trinity. This doctrine is the belief – shared by all the main
historic Christian traditions – that within God there is a living
threefold movement from the Father to the Son in the Holy Spirit. This
movement of divine life supplies the grammar for the way Christians
speak about the world’s creation, redemption, and final restoration.

It
was the experience of salvation in Christ that led early Christian
thinkers towards a doctrine of the Trinity. From the earliest days,
Christians were convinced that in Christ they had experienced God’s
saving self-revelation. And if Christ reveals God – if, looking at
Jesus, you find yourself looking at God – then Christ must somehow be
said to share in God’s divinity. Otherwise, you wouldn’t really have met
God in Christ, and God would remain hidden and unknown. The
doctrine of the Trinity was formulated as a way of safeguarding these
basic convictions about salvation and revelation.

In its briefest
form, the doctrine of the Trinity can be summarised with the statement
that God is “one being, three persons.” In the more elaborate language
of the Nicene Creed, the doctrine of the Trinity affirms that “Jesus
Christ, the only Son of God, [is] eternally begotten of the Father, God
from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made.”

How
exactly does this language about the Trinity relate to the ordinary
Christian experience of salvation? How does it relate to the spiritual
life? How does it relate to the way Christians read the Bible? Is
language really an adequate means of expressing truth about God? How
can we be sure that we really know anything about God at all?

These
are some of the key questions that we’ll be exploring throughout the
semester. You'll get to sample some of the richest spiritual and
theological writing in the Christian tradition. And you'll see that
those two aspects – the theological and the spiritual; knowing and
loving; dogma and mysticism – are very closely connected in our
tradition.

In the weekly tutorials we will be reading and studying
three major Christian thinkers: two Greek-speaking theologians from
fourth-century Cappadocia, Basil the Great (330-379 CE) and Gregory of
Nazianzus (329-389 CE); as well as the modern Swiss theologian Karl
Barth (1886-1968). Basil and Gregory were key figures in the formation
of Christian orthodoxy. Gregory presided over the Council of
Constantinople (381 CE), which produced the version of the Nicene Creed
that is still used in churches today. In the twentieth century, Karl
Barth provoked a "trinitarian revival," leading to widespread interest
in the doctrine of the Trinity. Under Barth's influence, the doctrine of
the Trinity remains one of the major themes of contemporary theology.

By
the time we have worked through our lectures and tutorials, you will
have an understanding of the major issues in contemporary trinitarian
theology, and you will have the tools to make your own informed
contribution to the contemporary discussion. Your final essay will give
you the opportunity to put those tools to work.

But the real
fruit of studying the doctrine of the Trinity isn't just the ability to
write a good essay. The fruit is seen in the way Christians love, pray,
preach, sing, contemplate, read scripture, form community, make moral
decisions, create art – and so on. The doctrine of the Trinity is the
grammar of the Christian life.

Weekly schedule

Each week's lecture focuses on one or two main historical figures, and works towards clarifying some aspect of contemporary theology. So for example, the week 10 lecture will focus on Julian of Norwich, but will eventually arrive at the contemporary discussion surrounding Moltmann.